La Cultura, Revisited

In the few short weeks of being back in Guatemala, I have come to realize how new many parts of this culture still are to me. It is not that I didn’t have the full experience last year; it’s that the depth and the extent of a culture can never be fully realized after only 10 months of living in a place. The last few weekends have been full of “cultural” experiences that are both brand new and repeats of things I did last year.

La feria (the fair) for example was one of my favorite “Xela experiences” of last year. During the two weekends surrounding Latin American Independence Day (September 15), the world’s scariest, ride-at-your-own-risk, most enjoyable fair comes to Xela. The Ferris Wheel here goes faster than most of the “fast” rides at a fair in the States. It is also the one ride I refuse to ride here (I don’t actually want to put my life in danger). The second visit to la feria was even better than the first. I rode all the rides I could convince people to accompany me on (the number of riders in our group was diminished because the only other female rider is pregnant). We ate a large array and quantity of gourmet fair food; and then my friend Marcela and I beat all the boys at foosball. That’s right. We beat 6 guys in a tournament; all are friends of ours that were quite embarrassed at the outcome.

Independence Day here is quite an ordeal. People travel from all over Central America to come to Xela. In addition to the fair, there are beauty pageants, concerts in the park, parades every day (or so it seems), and a large celebration to bring in the actual Day the night before, called the grito. They close off an entire main street the night of the grito and have vendors and stages set up all along the road. There are thousands of people, and concerts the whole night long, all culminating to a speech by the mayor at midnight, officially welcoming the Independence Day. As last year, the grito was an incredibly fun, entertaining night to mingle with all people from Latin America who have all come together to celebrate this day.

For the first time (because somehow I didn’t go last year…??) since I’ve been here, I also visited the Fuentes Georginas a few weekends ago. Fuentes is one of the places that is recommended by travel books. It is a set of naturally fed hot springs located at the base of one of the volcanoes. After having an incredibly relaxing day sitting in the pools feeling hot, yet cooled by the intermittent rain showers we got, I am saddened I just now discovered this place. Locals believe the pools to have some sort of healing power. I suppose if I daily carried loads on my back that weighed at least my body weight or more, or daily bent over tending my crops growing on the hillside for hours at a time, I too would think the hot pools that relieved my sore, aching bones and joints had healing powers. And the best part—Fuentes is only a gorgeous 35 minute drive from Xela.

This past weekend, a few teacher friends and I went to a little beach town on the Guatemalan Pacific coast named Tilapita. The organizers of the trip own property on the beach, and help sponsor a turtle hatchery on the little island. The official purpose of the trip was to search for turtles nesting on the beach, to recover their eggs, and put them in the hatchery to eventually help repopulate the turtles in the area. After two nights of looking, however, we only found one turtle egg, but no turtles. Lastima. However, my personal goal was to lay on the beach (check), read a book (check), and return relaxed and ready for the upcoming week (check). So I’d call it a successful weekend trip!

So while it’s nice to be the “old teacher” who has supposedly been through it all already, everything still seems new to me; I have only begun to scratch the surface on seeing and knowing Guatemala.